*For a list of organizations, you can see it here

Bunga Rampai, or BURAM for short is one of the classes we attended at GO. Communities, Student Activity Unit, and our Major Communities presented themselves one by one, explaining what they mainly do and their benefits for joining them.

In Binus, we have many organizations, from student activity organization to majors community. Majors community are an organization where its people are from the same major. For example, I am an IT student so I belong to HIMTI. The design has their own and so the other majors.

Meanwhile, student activity organization and communities are organizations based on interest. People from different majors can join. Some of them charge a price, but usually won’t cost much and you just have to pay once.

So why so many organization? Is it just for fun? No. In fact, it is necessary for us after we graduate. Nowadays, if you have good hardskill(academic and practical) you can get an interview at a company. But its your softskill that will get you the job and help you keep it. This is the reason why Binus university urged all its student to be active and involved in various organization. That is shown by the SAT system. It stands for Student Activity Transcript and is represented by points. If you join and actively involved in an organization, you will get points. The same goes for winning competition, participating in a seminar, being a committee for an event, or being an excecutive board of an organization. The more points, the better, since students need a minimum of 120 points of SAT to take thesis trial (By completely finishing FEP, you already get 100 points). So you can not graduate without networking with other people. But, I can attend seminar to get points right? Yes, that is true, but it will take you 10 seminars to get 20 points. Joining organizations is preferred because it also helps you learn the 6 key softskill.

What is 6 key softskills? They are the softskills you will need if you aim to work in a multinational company or start yours as an entrepreneur. They are : Self management, team work, communication, Initiative & enterprise, problem solving and decision making, planning and organizing. Having these skills might mean easier path to success.

So, we should join as many organizations as possible? That may not be the case. Some of the organization requires us to put a lot of time to its activity, meanwhile others held an event at certain times only. We have to shoose wisely, because taking on too many commitments may lead to us forsaking our study. But, if you ever wanted to join another, you van always do it every year.

Almost every university in the world have something called orientation. It has became an unwritten tradition to have a period of time when freshmen will be taken around the campus in order to get them accustomed to college. Here, in Binus university, we also have that kind of program.

Freshmen Enrichment Program

It is called Freshmen Enrichment Program or FEP in short. Our FEP consists of three stages, General Orientation (GO), Academic Orientation (AO), and finally Campus Life Organization (CLO).

General Orientation

I was assigned in class DAS04. A lot of my highshcool friends from Pahoa are in batch 1 or 2, so when I entered the class, I literally knew nobody. I thought of this as a good opportunity to make a lot of new friends. I took the front seat and started to converse with the person beside me. Judging by the looks of my classmates, many of them are not from the surrounding cities. This piqued my curiosity, so I began to approached them. It turned out I was right, many of them are from mid and east java. That makes us a class of diversity! (Ha, nice!).

Here is a photo of us with our buddy coordinator. Notice me in the leftmost side? Yes, that fat one.

In this GO, we also gained knowledge about the rules, how important our attendance is, and student centers around the campus. It it very clear where to go if you want to get further information about something specific. Want to get training to hone your softskills? Easy, go to the SADC(Student Activity and Development Center). Want to protest because you are counted as absent meanwhile you are not? Go to the SSC(Student Services Center). Want to know whether your lecturer is available? Ask the LSC(Lecturer Services Center).

Binus pretty much got everything covered even the information system for students. Maybe that one thing which separates binus from other university in Indonesia is Binusmaya. In GO, we are taught to use our Binusmaya to seek our schedule, grades and points, or friends in the same class. You can even protest online if you think your grades are wrong. In addition, Binus also cooperate with Microsoft, so you can get many programs or operating systems for free. I must admit, it is quite convenient.

In the end of General Orientation, we held a gathering and expo. All of the class show off their solidarity by dancing. They are very good and funny at the same time. It also surprised us when our buddy coordinator danced in front of us. Some of us really have the moves.

As for the Expo, we get to see every student activity organization and majors community. You can see the list of organizations here